Opponents of county council plans to charge for residents' parking permits in Oxford yesterday lost their latest attempt to derail the scheme.

The 11th-hour bid to postpone the project failed after Tory county councillors - all of whom represent wards outside the city - said there was nothing wrong with charging for permits and the authority was not obliged to listen to negative consultation responses anyway.

Their flat refusal to accept that the scheme was flawed and that the consultation should be carried out again, caused deep anger among the mainly city councillors who had turned up to speak at a County Hall meeting.

The meeting was ill-tempered, partly because those councillors opposed to charging spoke passionately for 45 minutes before a motion to accept the original scheme was passed in five minutes flat.

Labour county councillor Terry Joslin said the decision would bring the county council into disrepute.

"We are on a hiding to nothing," he said. "We have managed to alienate half the population of Oxford simply by a process that can only be called 'consult and reject'.

"We have also upset a fellow authority. Oxford City is of the opinion that we have acted improperly.

"This may or may not be true, but it is not for us to bully our way to a decision before settling our differences with them."

The meeting was a review by the environment and economy scrutiny committee and its vote to approve the scheme means the only avenue for opponents is the mooted legal challenge by the city council.

As it stands, residents will be charged at least £40 for a permit - increasing in price with each extra car they own - in a scheme to be phased-in as and when zones come up for renewal. The first is due next month.

Meanwhile, the issue of carers' permits and those for tradesman remain unclear, according to opponents of the scheme.

Richard Dix, the county's acting head of transport, suggested workmen arranged their work so it could all be in a particular area of the city in the same week, used a relevant permit and then charged customers extra to cover the cost.

He added: "We fully reported both how we did the consultation and what the results were.

"There is an obligation to consider what comes back through consultation - there is not an obligation to agree with it."

Cowley & Littlemore Labour county councillor John Sanders said the decision was "blatantly undemocratic" and "unsafe".